


Some Jokes About Death That Most Of the Other Kids Just Don't Get

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order: SVU, Lost Souls - Poppy Z. Brite, The X-Files
Genre: Gen, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 17:33:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone's just trying to find their own version of normal.  Is that so bad?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Jokes About Death That Most Of the Other Kids Just Don't Get

**Author's Note:**

> This comes after "Life and Death Are Things You Just Do When You're Bored". I am not involved in the production of any of these media, nor is this school. The title of this story comes from "Wizard People, Dear Readers", by Brad Neely. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

92

It's not strictly allowed. It's not allowed at all, Bolander hisses. Munch holds the receiver to his shoulder. “Then, don't tell.”  
Bolander frowns, but says nothing, so Munch keeps dialing.  
“If Gee asks me, I'm going to tell him,” Bolander says, but it's already ringing.  
“Mulder.”  
“Mulder, it's John Munch. There's a case you might be interested in...”  
They meet for coffee. Munch brings the file. Mulder brings one of his own. It's a lot thicker. He's already there, with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He offers one to Munch, who accepts, though he hadn't smoked in years.  
“What's this?” Munch asks, pointing at Mulder's file.  
“It's the case,” Mulder says brightly, and opens the file, “I have crime scene reports going back to the seventies, and anecdotal evidence going back more than fifty years.”  
“How did you find all of this?”  
“I look for cases of murder by exsanguination, usually body-dumps, featuring multiple injuries.”  
Munch raises his eyebrows. “Some made by human teeth?”  
“Not necessarily. I'm looking for anything unexplained, not a specific M.O.. These,” he holds up his file, “are just the ones that fit your pattern. I want anything that doesn't conform to conventional criminal behavior. I don't want shootings, single-wound stabbings,” he ticks off points on his fingers, “beatings, anything that looks like domestic violence or revenge-murder. I don't want serials, unless they show very specific markers.”  
“Like?”  
“Like this,” then, he smiles, dazzlingly boyish, but distinctly unsettling, “By definition, this is a serial: it's a series of murders. The victims are unknown to the killers-”  
“Except the most recent one.”  
Now, it's Mulder's turn to raise his eyebrows. “Really?”  
“The latest victim, Laine Petersen, was a friend of one of the killers.”  
“Tell me more.”  
Munch goes back over the past few weeks of his life- finding Laine's body, interviewing his friends, finding out about Nothing, dragging those beatniks from North Carolina back to Baltimore. Talking to Ghost.  
“Was any of this verifiable?”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I mean, do you have proof of this phenomenon?”  
“Phenomenon?”  
“The psychic phenomenon. You said that he claimed to be clairvoyant.”  
Munch is forced to admit not.  
“Never mind. It's notoriously difficult to verify. Most clairvoyants can't perform on command, and the things they perceive aren't necessarily what law enforcement is looking for. Tell me more about what he told you.”  
Munch goes back through what he can recall.  
“Dead man's collar-” Mulder says, flipping through his papers, “That's interesting. I have, here, an account from the descendant of someone who was involved in a hanging party-”  
“A hanging party?” Munch says with a bitter laugh, “Are we talking about a lynching?”  
Mulder frowns.  
“Was the victim, by any chance, African American?”  
“No, actually. That's what separates it from most accounts of the kind. Considering the body of the anecdote, if you will, this was more what one might call 'frontier justice'. At a house party, a young woman of some standing was 'indecently assaulted'-”  
“Raped.”  
“It doesn't go into detail, but the fancier the euphemism, the worse the act, I've found,” says Mulder, reading, “Witnesses describe her injuries as savage... she was bitten in several places... This was in... it doesn't say precisely where, but this was somewhere in Georgia, sometime in the last hundred years-”  
“That's nice and vague.”  
“It usually is,” Mulder sniffs, “This woman was assaulted, and a group of male guests apprehended the perpetrator, who was in a state of 'great excitement'-”  
“Drunk?”  
“Possibly. I would suggest sexually aroused, as opposed to inebriated, ranting about blood-”  
“'Ranting about blood'?” Munch laughs, “Seriously?”  
“Are you going to do that every time I say something?”  
Munch makes the zipping gesture across his lips.  
“Ranting about blood- he stated that there had been no actual crime committed, because he had to have blood to live- he apparently injured several of the men involved, knocked out teeth, et cetera. They hanged him, and some time later, when they'd had some reviving beverages, they returned to the hanging tree to cut down the body, and they found that it was gone.”  
“Had it been, I don't know, cut down by someone else?”  
“No. The noose had been partially unwound, but the rope hadn't been damaged by any bladed instrument.”  
“What does that prove?”  
“Well, I have another account,” Mulder pulls out another sheet of paper, “from a domestic, an Esther Smith, stating that she saw the hanged man release himself from the noose and jump down from a height of twenty or more feet- which is impressive, even if we weren't talking about someone who'd been hanged half an hour earlier.”  
“That doesn't prove anything. Hanging doesn't always result in an immediate death. If the neck isn't broken, death by strangulation results. If they didn't tie the noose right, he could have just lost consciousness. Twenty feet isn't that far. It's survivable.”  
“A description of the perpetrator: slight, light brown hair, green eyes.”  
“And? That could be anyone.”  
“You aren't convinced.”  
“I want to be. I just need-” Munch gestures at the sheet of paper Mulder's holding, “more than this.”  
“They find each other in the fifties,” Mulder goes on, like Munch had said nothing, “After that, they're unstoppable. After that, there are three of them. One of them is small, with light brown hair and remarkably green eyes. The other two look like brothers. Sort of. They're about the same size and build, but one of them has sharp features and the other one is rounder. They're always together,” Mulder looks through his file, and holds up a bunch of papers, “I have accounts, from the thirties on, of a series of crimes committed by a pair- they're similar enough, but one is sharp and one is round- rapes, assaults, robberies- at least one murder. I have an earlier account, from the twenties- though it's vague, just like you like them- of a particularly bloody assault by someone a witness knew only as 'Mortensen' or 'Mortenson'. A young boy was slashed with a razor. The witness then observed, and I quote: 'We felt that something wasn't right, so we ran out into the yard, where we found him, [meaning the assailant] drinking from the boy's neck, as though from a fountain. Then, he looked at us, his piggy eyes all big in his round face, let out a laugh, and ran.'”  
“What does this mean?” Munch is holding his head. He wasn't aware he'd done that.  
“It means that there's a path you can trace, from as early as the twenties, of crimes that are largely opportunistic, but for the most part center around the taking of blood. That's what they want, that's what they need. They're vampires, Detective Munch.”  
“Just 'Munch',” he says, softly. He's looking into his coffee. The cream has partially congealed, made grainy ripples on the beige surface. “Give me a cigarette. Please.”  
Mulder does, and lights it. He continues, with enthusiasm unabated: “Munch. They're vampires. The three of them have been on the move since they found each other, about forty years ago. There are three of them. There are the two brothers, if they are actually related- they might as well be. One angular, one round. There's the other one. Their leader. He cheated death once. It made him bold. He got smart, too. He made the other two smarter. Without him, they would have gotten caught a lot earlier.”  
“He's dead,” Munch murmurs.  
“What?”  
“Something Ghost said,” Munch says, “I just remembered. 'He has an appointment in Samarra.”  
“Oh.”  
“This kid, Jason- 'Nothing'- is with them now.”  
“Three blood types,” Mulder whispers.  
“What?”  
“He's his son.”  
“What?” Munch laughs.  
“I have,” Mulder flips through the file, “I have a series of unsolved crimes like those I described, leading east, from L.A. to New Orleans, culminating in... 1977-” he says, “1977- December. New Orleans. A body found in a vacant lot. A young woman- the M.E. determined that she'd died in childbirth, bled to death. Later, she's identified as Jessy Creech. Her father, one Wallace Creech said that she'd fallen in with a bad crowd, become obsessed with vampires, seemed to think she was one.”  
“That doesn't prove anything.”  
“A few days later, your boy appears in Maryland. A baby left on a doorstep?”  
“What does that mean?” Munch laughs, “It doesn't mean anything. Do you know how many women die in childbirth each year? Do you know how many babies are abandoned? If you look at the big picture, it doesn't mean anything.”  
Mulder laughs gently, shakes his head. “I'm not looking at the big picture. I'm looking at this case. I'm finding facts that fit the case.”  
“But that's the problem. It's like finding a suspect, and fitting your profile around him, after the fact. You can't do that!” Munch exclaims.  
Mulder laughs again. Munch looks around. The sunlight is coming in peach and pomegranate through the blinds.  
It's Mulder who says it, the thing that seems inevitable once it's said: “Why don't we go for a drink?”  
“It's five o'clock somewhere.” Munch looks at his watch. “Here, in twenty minutes.” He shrugs.  
They only have to cross the street. There's a restaurant, there, the kind that will give you Friday night on a Wednesday afternoon for the price of a couple of appetizers. They don't even bother with the appetizers. After a couple of drinks, Munch sighs: “Tell me what you think is going on.”  
“I told you. They're vampires,” Mulder's voice is soft, mellow in inebriation, “There were three of them. Then, you told me, they picked up another- who I now believe to be the son of their original leader.”  
Munch shakes his head. “This is so wild.” He gestures to the waiter for another drink.  
Mulder laughs. “But that's detective work. You have to take leaps. That's the essence of it.”  
Munch shakes his head. “Not how we do it.”  
“No?”  
“It's different, being a cop and working in a squad. You've never done that,” he wags his finger.  
“No,” Mulder laughs, “no, I haven't.”  
“There are personalities. There's politics. You don't slip out of your place. You have a role, and you play it.”  
“So do I.”  
“But your role is not giving a shit what anyone else thinks!”  
Mulder laughs again, all the way down from his belly. “That's true. That's true,” he says, less raucously, “I don't get to have what you have, though.”  
“Yeah- what's that? A pain in my ass called Stanley Bolander?”  
“You get to be part of something.”  
“So do you. You're in the FBI. That's pretty impressive.”  
“It's okay.”  
Munch looks at him over the rims of his glasses. “It's more than okay.”  
Mulder frowns. It looks like a pout. “I don't want to talk about this anymore.”  
“Fine. What do you want to talk about?”  
Mulder smiles, shakes his head. “I don't know.” His expression is soft, vulnerable. There are a lot of places to go from here. Only one of them appeals to Munch. He asks the question.  
There's a hotel not so far from there, in a business park. That's the place, because they can walk.  
“Don't want to have to arrest myself for drunk driving,” Munch says.  
“It's Virginia; it's out of your jurisdiction.”  
“Pedant,” Munch says, bats at Mulder. Mulder dribbles out a laugh, horrible and charming, leans into Munch. Now, Munch can feel his own heart beating; loud but remote, like it's something that just follows him around.  
In the room, Mulder says, “So.”  
“So,” says Munch, and slips out of his jacket. Mulder's hands fall onto his shoulders.  
They kiss, soft and boozy, Mulder curving downward, and Munch stretching upward. On the bed, they kiss again, Mulder sighing as he lets Munch roll him onto his back.  
“That's nice,” Mulder murmurs, pulling off his tie.  
“I think you're too drunk,” Munch says, making a face.  
“No, no.” Mulder waves his hand.  
“I think you are.”  
Mulder blows a raspberry.  
“Okay,” says Munch, and rolls away from him.  
“No. Why?” Mulder says.  
Munch shakes his head. “Maybe next time.” He pats Mulder's cheek. “Come on,” he huffs, “Let's just lie here quietly.”  
Mulder's eyes are already closed. “Okay.”  
“Okay?”  
“Okay.” He smiles.  
Munch puts his arms around him. “Let's just lie here.”  
“Mmm,” Mulder hums.  
They have the room for the night, so that's where they stay. Wound around each other, Mulder's head on his shoulder. It is nice. It's very nice. Is it proof that he's getting old and sad that Munch prefers this to the sex they could have had?  
Probably. He dozes, wakes up slightly more sober, and wonders where he is. The puff of Mulder's breath against his skin reminds him. He's here for the truth. It's beginning to seem to him, though, that there is no truth, that there is just more information. From which one can sculpt one's own truth, like a sandcastle. And Mulder's on the shore. Around him, there's nothing but sand, and he can make whatever he likes. No one to complain but the sea.  
“The sounding sea,” he murmurs, to no one.  
It's dark out. He frowns. He's not sober enough to go home, yet. In his sleep, Mulder makes a sound, small and worried.  
“It's okay,” Munch says, not thinking about what he's saying or what it means, “It's okay.”  
“Mmm.”  
“That's right,” he pets Mulder's skull, “It's okay.”  
“Mmm,” says Mulder again, then, “No. I'm awake.”  
“Okay. How do you feel?”  
“I have to piss,” Mulder mumbles, his face against the pillow.  
“I'll just let you take care of that on your own.”  
Mulder smiles. “You don't want to watch?”  
“Only on the weekends.”  
Mulder laughs again, scrapes himself up, and Munch is falling asleep again when Mulder fills his side of the bed. “You want to try again?”  
“The resilience of youth.”  
“I'm serious,” Mulder says, and he sounds heartbreakingly serious.  
“Oh, yeah?”  
“Why not?” Again, he sounds so grave.  
“You're still drunk,” Munch says.  
Mulder frowns. “Just don't-”  
“I'm not going anywhere.”  
He feels Mulder fall back down into sleep, and he follows him.

It's morning when they wake again. The gray light coming in through the blinds tells him so.  
“Shit,” says Munch. At least he isn't too hung-over. He's still wearing his watch. It's six. His shoulders fall. That isn't so bad. He can be a little late.  
“Good morning, Sunshine,” Mulder says.  
“Good morning, yourself. Look, it's been fun, but I have to get going.”  
“You don't even have time for a shower?”  
Munch frowns. “Are you still drunk?”  
Mulder's smile is sloppy but sober. “I just like you.”  
“I'll take a rain-check,” he kisses Mulder softly, “Some of us have to work for a living.”  
“It's your loss,” Mulder says, sprawling across the bed as Munch rises, gets his jacket.  
“Don't I know it.”

95

This time, Mulder calls him. “They fucked-up.”  
“And 'hello' to you, too. I was starting to worry that you regretted our liaison.” Meldrick looks at him. Munch ignores it.  
“Oh. No. Things have changed. I have a partner, now.” The way it comes out, so quickly, and the weight that the word carries suggests more than one meaning.  
“Well, ask me to coffee. I'm still between wives, so I don't have a curfew. You can tell me all about him.”  
“Her.”  
“Excuse me. You can tell me all about her. And this other thing.”  
“Okay.”  
They meet at the same place as the last time. The drink menu is twice as long, and they don't allow smoking indoors anymore, but it's otherwise the same. No, it's not.  
“Tell me about your partner,” Munch says gently. The last time they saw each other, Mulder seemed skittish, unbalanced. He still seems unbalanced, but on a different axis.  
“She's- she's smart, energetic.”  
“You're describing a golden retriever. Tell me what she's really like.”  
“She's the best person I know,” Mulder says, then laughs, to make it seem trivial, like casual sexist flattery. Then: “She's someone I can work with. She understands. She doesn't always agree, but she wants the same things that I want.”  
“Mazel tov. You said that they made a mistake.”  
“Yes.” Mulder shows him a file, this one much thinner than the last one. “Last year, I was in California, looking into a case- there was a murder, exsanguination.”  
“Was it them?”  
“No,” Mulder waves a hand, “Someone else.”  
“How many vampires are there in the continental United States?”  
“More than you'd think. But they were there, in Southern California, at the same time.”  
“What are the odds?”  
“Well, if you think about it, it's in their best interest to stay in a major metropolitan area. It's easier to disappear. Yet, they have to keep traveling, because that also minimizes their chances of being caught. It's unlikely that they'd risk travel by air or boat. How many good sized cities are there in North America? Consider, also, demographics-”  
“What happened, Mulder?”  
“The kid, Nothing, tried to get away- or, at least, he tried to live something like a normal life. He had a job for a while. The owner of a cafe in Silverlake identified him. He gave his name as Laine Petersen.”  
Munch raises his eyebrows.  
“He's working there a month when one of his co-workers is found murdered; Valeria Valdez, 26, dead by exsanguination, covered in human bite marks.”  
“DNA?”  
Mulder shakes his head. “Too degraded for analysis.”  
“What does this mean?”  
“It means that they're still out there. We can still catch them.”  
“Mulder. You're talking about a year-old case in Los Angeles.”  
“Eight months old.”  
“I don't care if it's eight days old. I work in Baltimore. I can't do anything about something that happened across the country.”  
“I just thought you'd like to know.”  
“I appreciate the call. I just don't think that I can help.”  
He has to leave, then. He might be between wives, but he's not where Mulder is. Whatever the name for it is. If, indeed, there is a name.  
He sighs to himself. This has to be some kind of summation of the essential human condition: people temporarily united- by shared enthusiasm; by grief; by loneliness; by accident- until something equally evanescent tears them apart again. When he gets back to the station, Meldrick is bitching at him about something. What it is, precisely, Munch doesn't know, but it's Meldrick- familiar- known- part of his life, day-to-day. His partner.  
Munch rolls his eyes. “I'm gone for five minutes, and your entire life falls apart.”

00

Fin shakes his head.  
“Oh,” Munch waves his hand, “This is nothing.”  
“You must have seen some weird shit in Baltimore to make this seem normal.”  
“You have no idea.”  
Fin smiles. “So, give me an idea.”  
“Get me drunk, and I'll tell you more than you wanted to know.”  
Munch doesn't expect anything to come of it. It's the same 'new partners', 'getting to know you' crap he's gone through more times than he can count. Lather, rinse, repeat. Fin seems like a good man, Munch sees no reason that they can't work well together, but it's wearing. It wears you down: the constant flow of new people into your life, flowing like water-  
“First round's mine,” Fin says, claps him on the shoulder at the end of the day.  
“After that, we can duke it out?”  
“After that, you're on your own.”  
“Don't worry; I'm a cheap date. Old liver.” Munch pats the approximate location of his liver.  
They go to the kind of bright, forcedly casual bar that has become the norm in the past few years. It reminds Munch of something, something he's only partly aware he's remembering, until it begins to take shape, and he pushes it back down into oblivion.  
Munch takes a sip of his drink. “You really wanna know?”  
“Yeah, I wanna know.”  
“I think you might be disappointed. It's not actually much of a story.”  
Fin shrugs. “There's nothing on TV tonight.”  
“Thanks. Okay. I preface this by saying that none of this is provable, so I'm not making any assertions as to its validity, whatsoever...”

“So, wait, this kid tries to go straight, but then he just murders one of his co-workers? Why?”  
“Why not?”  
Fin shakes his head.  
“We'll never know. That's the truth. We'll never know exactly what happened.”

The facts are these:  
It's 1994. Nothing is seventeen. He gets a job at a cafe. He's been hanging around there about a week, hunched everyday for hours over a small cup of coffee and the free newspapers they stock at the front, when the manager comes over and says, Do you want a job, or what?  
Nothing accepts. He's been on his own for a month, sleeping wherever he can find shelter. It's summer; he's lucky that it's warm, so when he can't find anywhere else, he lies on the beach. A vampire in sunny California. It's funny. When he thinks about it, it makes him laugh; sometimes, it comes to him at inconvenient times- when he's standing in line at the convenience store, or waiting for a bus. He hasn't had any blood in the time since Molochai and Twig fucked off- to God knows where. If, indeed, God even cares to know.  
Though, surely, God wouldn't care about him, either. He's not as deep in it as they are- but he's still in deep. Up to his seventeen-year-old neck in murder and human misery. He can't make himself feel bad about it, not truly, but he wants to stop. Wanted to stop. Woke up one evening, and couldn't take it anymore. There was a terrible fight- Nothing screaming at them both in a voice that kept cracking embarrassingly, throwing shoes and books and finally a lamp- Molochai holding back Twig, and then, Twig holding back Molochai- until one of them, Twig or Molochai, said in a too-calm voice: “Then just leave, little baby. Just see what it's like out there in the big, bad world, with no family.  
But Nothing never had a family. A mother dead from the act of bearing him. A grandfather eaten from the inside out by grief and hatred. Two foster parents who alternately smothered him and cast him aside. A father who-  
Well, the less said about that, the better.  
No, Nothing never had a family. He sprang fully-formed, from the brow of the world, and the solitude, the feeling of it, comes back to him. It's not like those terrible nights back in Towson, because, now, he can go wherever he wants to. He can do whatever he wants to. He knows what he is. He knows what he is, and that's freedom, true freedom.  
He hasn't had any blood in a month. Sometimes, the desire for it is painful, way down in his guts, like the longing for sex- for the touch of another person's hand- for the warmth of another person's body. Then, after the pain, comes numbness, and he finds that he can go on. It's easier. Not really any more pleasant, but easier. That's how he ends up waking up earlier each day, going to the cafe, looking at classified ads, staying out until it's safe to lie down, waking up again, with the sun.  
“Do you have a place to live?” asks the manager of the cafe, Ronette, who is dark-skinned, round-faced, and wears the same cat's-eye eyeliner as her namesake.  
“Sure,” shrugs Nothing, “I stay with friends.”  
“Liar,” she shrugs back, “There's a couch in the back. If you want to use it, you can.”  
“Thanks, but I don't need to.”  
“Hey,” she raises her hands, “Don't do me any favors, Laine.”  
He didn't even think before giving his name as Laine. It just came out. He can't feel bad. About that, or anything else. He just keeps trying to do better. It's not enough, but it's all he can do.  
At night, he sleeps on the couch. Sometimes, Ronette stays late, doing paperwork or re-stocking, and she falls asleep next to him, in the armchair by the couch, her sweater draped over her, her short hair sticking straight up. Sometimes, Jack, who is very pale and has wide hips and a flat chest and an asymmetrical haircut, stays after their shift, drinking from a bottle they hide in a paper bag, and Nothing shares the couch with them. Sometimes, Valeria gets afraid of taking the bus home, so she takes the couch with Jack, and Nothing sleeps on the floor, a stack of magazines under his head. Sometimes, everyone stays late, and Nona makes margaritas in the blender they use for smoothies, and Ronette's girlfriend, Sholanda, brings by a box of CDs, and everyone sleeps in the cafe, on tables, or in chairs, or on the counter. The next morning, they wake up, hung-over to one degree or another, and do their best to clean up before opening.  
It's not family, and Nothing is sure that, one day, he'll have to leave, but it's nice. It's nice to pretend to be normal.  
“Are you a run-away?,” asks Jack, pulling down their sunglasses, then wincing against the sun, and pushing them back up.  
“Maybe.”  
Jack nods, and says nothing else. They offer Nothing a cigarette, and the two of them sit in the shade, smoking, until Valeria calls them lazy bitches, and tells them to help her sweep the floors.  
Jack laughs, hands her their cigarette, which is only half gone, and takes the broom from her. “Come on,” they say to Nothing, “Let's do a little work for a change.”  
Then, Valeria comes back in, and she and Jack stand talking together, about what, Nothing doesn't know. Valeria is twenty-five, and has been there since she was Nothing's age; Jack could be anywhere between twenty and forty, and only Ronette seems to know anything about them. It occurs to Nothing, more than once, that he might be looking at another vampire. Sometimes, he's so sure that there's one near. He can't see, but he can feel. Just like he could back in Towson. The promise, the surety that there must be someone like him, close by, close enough to feel their breath, their heartbeat. Their hearts do beat, after all.  
One day, he says blandly: “Are you a vampire?”  
Jack laughs, fully, for the first time that Nothing's heard: “Are you?”  
Nothing doesn't ask again.  
Then, one day, he comes to work, sees the police around the cafe. He finds Nona, smoking a cigarette, inhaling with her lips pursed and exhaling with a hiss, looking into the sun, her eyes clenched into pinholes.  
“What happened?” Nothing asks. Though, he knows. He can feel it.  
“Some sick fuck got in last night, I guess, tried to rob the place, found Valeria sleeping there. Killed her. To think, she was afraid to take the bus,” Nona turns, throws her cigarette into the distance, “You aren't safe anywhere. They'll get you wherever you go.”  
Ronette's talking to the police. Nothing waits for her. Even though he already knows, twice over, he asks her what happened. Her eyeliner has run in rivers down her cheeks.  
“I don't want to talk about this again,” she spits, then, “Nona, give me a cigarette, for fuck's sake.”  
Nona gives her a cigarette, then pulls her close, and they stand there, not exactly hugging, but rocking each other back and forth, Ronette holding the cigarette away from them, though it isn't lit.  
Then, Jack shows up, and the whole thing begins again. “Shit. Fuck,” they say, and pull from their bag a flask. They take a long drink, then offer it to Ronette, Nona, then Nothing. By the time he gets it, all that's left is a trickle.  
The police talk to everyone, even Nothing. The second he gives his name, he knows he has to go. That name burns like a brand on his hide, like a goddamn candle. It's unlikely, even Nothing knows, that they'll look him up in any, like, files that they have, trace him back to Towson, back to anything, but something tells him that he needs to go. He speaks to the police, then, moving like a ghost, he says goodbye to Ronette, to Sholanda, who's there now, to Nona, and Jack, and the other employees who have showed up. Jack looks at him, and he looks at Jack. What is in that look, Nothing cannot say. He doesn't look again. He doesn't look back. He keeps walking. He turns the corner. He sees the black van. He reaches for the door, which he knows will be open, and he gets in.

“It wasn't the kid, though. After Mulder left, I looked at the file,” Munch says, belatedly, “Two different doers, neither blood type matched his. It wasn't his style, anyway. He was brutal, sure, but methodical, quick. This was sadistic, savage, for lack of a better word- gross. The crime scene was a mess. Mulder knew. That's what he was trying to tell me. He was trying to tell me that the kid was-” Munch breathes in, looks at the ceiling, “still savable? Is that even a way to look at it, when someone's committed one murder that you know of, before their sixteenth birthday?”  
Fin shrugs. “I have to think so.”  
“I'm not talking about normal murders. This was sick shit. Delusional shit,” he adds, as an afterthought.  
“It's still a kid.”  
Munch sighs. Is he looking at another Cassidy? “Thanks for the drink.”  
“Hey, hey,” Fin says, “Do you have to go? Let's have dinner. Talk about something that doesn't involve evil creatures of the night,” Fin motions for a waiter.  
“Okay,” Munch says, “Okay.”  
“So, what happened to Mulder?”  
“He's dead.”

25

Mulder's dead. After all of the pain, and mystery, and bullshit, his body just gives out. He's relatively young, but he's lived enough life for several people. It caught up with him, Scully supposes.  
“I'm sorry for your loss,” the funeral director says, offers her hand. Scully shakes it.  
“Now,” the funeral director plops down in her chair, motions for Scully to sit, “did you and your father discuss what kind of service he wanted. Was he a spiritual man?”  
“In his way. He wasn't religious, though.”  
“Not religious,” she- her name is Ashanti- says as she makes a note on her tablet, “Any aesthetic preferences? Were visuals important to him?”  
Scully smiles. “They couldn't have been less important.”  
“Simplicity,” Ashanti chirps, “Now, we do offer a service in which we assist in writing any sort of eulogy you might want- or in the reading of the eulogy. We understand that it can be difficult to express your feelings in this time of grief, or that the speaking aloud of your feelings, in front of others can add to the stress you already feel. So, I'd like to extend to you this courtesy. It's free of charge. We send someone to your home, or to the location of your choice, and we help you to put into words the things you felt for your father.”  
Scully blinks. “I don't think I need help in that department.”  
“Okay. If you change your mind, we're here for you. We also offer grief counseling. We have an in-house caterer, for a wake, or any other reception-”  
“I just want to keep it as simple as possible. My father-” and doesn't that feel weird to say- “was a very private person, a simple person, in a lot of ways. I think he'd just want a short, dignified service.”  
“Okay. That's good. So, flowers?”  
“Some.”  
“A wreath?”  
Scully makes a face, shakes her head.  
“Simple arrangements?”  
“I think so.”  
“Lilies?”  
“I don't think he'd like those.”  
“Roses?”  
“White roses?”  
“We can provide you with white roses. How many?”  
Scully breathes out through her nose. “What do you think?”  
“We usually arrange six dozen around the coffin, that way, you have beauty without excess. It's very subdued and very tasteful.”  
“I'll take that.”  
“Flowers...” Ashanti looks at her tablet, “Yay or nay on a reception?”  
“I'm going to do something at home.”  
“Ah. Lovely. No religious preference-”  
“I don't need anyone to speak. By the grave. I'm not expecting a big turn-out.”  
“Small, intimate. Okay. Well, if you'll accompany me to the next room, we can go about selecting a coffin.  
His second. Scully stands. Her legs seem very far way, as do the tips of her fingers. “Do you have some coffee, or tea...”  
“I can certainly have some brought in. Coffee or tea?”  
“Either,” Scully says, her voice far from her, too.  
Ashanti picks up her tablet, holds it at an angle. “Bryce?”  
“Yep?”  
“Can we get some tea in here, please? Green?”  
“Yep.”  
A moment later, Bryce brings in the tea, warning them that it's very hot. Scully takes a sip, burns her tongue, hisses.  
“Careful, honey,” says Bryce.  
Scully looks at him, abashed at her carelessness. He smiles, and leaves them.  
“Are you feeling okay?” Ashanti asks.  
“Yes. It's all just a little overwhelming.”  
“It will be. But you'll get through it. We'll help, however you want us to.”  
“The coffin?”  
“Yes,” Ashanti says and rises.  
Scully seeks out her legs, finds them, and rises.

56

“Scull-bags.”  
“Shitface.”  
“Pull up a pew.” Schiffer motions to the side of the table, where there are no pews, or seating of any kind. For all that the world has changed- distressingly so!- this, Scully finds, is never that different than what she remembers. Death, it seems, likes retro. The room is pleasantly dark, for the sake of Schiffer's migraine disorder. Scully likes it when it's dark, now; it used to be so disorienting, but now, it's a comfort. Good for hiding her face.  
“Now,” they say, clapping their hands together, the florescent blue anti-biological coating letting off little particles of light. “Your subject is beyond interesting. Did you know that you can pinpoint a person's place of birth, and the amount of time they spent there, and other locations, based on the mineral deposits in their teeth and bones?”  
Scully rolls her eyes. “Everyone knows that.”  
“Did you know that you can then measure those concentrations, test them against minute geological changes, and,” they wave their hands, “other things, and using a lot of super-cool math, determine a person's exact age?”  
“No. I didn't.”  
“Almost to the day. Your little friend is seventy-nine.”  
Scully says nothing for a moment. “But he doesn't look any older than twenty, twenty-five.”  
“Pardon you.”  
“They don't look any older than twenty.”  
Schiffer chuckles. “The robot doesn't lie, Scull-bags. This kid was ready to celebrate their eightieth birthday. Do you want to know more?”  
“Yes.”  
“They've been around. Born someplace in the southern United States, not south of Georgia, but not north of Maryland, not west of Louisiana, spent most of their time, pre-adolescence, in that area. After that, this kid starts moving. They're all over the continental United States. Those bones saw a lot. Earthquakes, sending things long-buried into the air. Brush-fires- they were there for the big one in California, in 1994, a lot of ash in those bones,” Schiffer muses, “Ocean-storms. They saw a lot of sea air- from 2020-ish, for about ten years, they saw a lot of stuff that can only come in over the sea. The calcium deposits in those years were through the roof. They ate a lot of shellfish. They hadn't been here long- about five years. I think they'd been here before, though, about twenty years ago. There's a thin stratum of-”  
“It's okay. I mean. That's enough. I believe you.”  
“Okay,” Schiffer clears their throat. “What do you want to know?”  
“Stomach contents,” Scully says, not even thinking.  
“Oh, shit. Right. Blood.”  
“Like an ulcer?” she asks, with an innocent look.  
“No. Like you didn't know. It's not their blood. There are,” they shake their head, “three different exemplars of DNA in there. I can't fully reconstruct them, because of degradation by the acid, but I know they aren't theirs. There's more blood, lower in the digestive tract. The fecal bacteria are- unique. I mean, obviously, but they don't look like any I've ever seen before. The digestive tract is, at first, unexceptional, but it more closely resembles that of a, a cat or a seal, an obligate carnivore, than that of an omnivore. The truly weird thing is,” they hold up a finger, glowing pale blue, “it wasn't always that way. In the past, say, sixty years, it's changed. There's- it looks like scarring, but it isn't that, not really. I want to say alteration, but that implies surgery-”  
“I know what you mean.”  
“Good. It's fucked-up,” Schiffer shakes their head, “It's not normal. The teeth were filed to a point- if everything else weren't weird enough. Scull-bags, is this a fucking vampire?”  
“You tell me,” she says, blandly.  
“Fuck you, 'you tell me'.”  
“Are you going to back me up, when I have to explain myself?”  
Schiffer slams their hands down on the edge of the table. “Yes. Of course I will. But that doesn't have anything to do with this.”  
“It has everything to do with this.”  
“For fuck's sake- stop being opaque for a second, and just talk to me. What do I need to say to help you?”  
“That I was justified in believing this person to be dangerous.”  
“All right. Yes.”  
“Good.”  
“Now, you tell me what is going on.”  
Scully sighs. “This doesn't go further than this room.”  
Schiffer rolls their eyes. “Obviously.”  
“They were a vampire. His name was Jason Duchac, more commonly known as Nothing. He was born in 1977, of a young woman named Jessy Creech, who died in childbirth. A detective in the Baltimore P.D. first noticed him in 1992. He was connected to the murder of a boy named Laine Petersen. The FBI subsequently became involved, and an agent named Mulder kept track of him from then, on. There were several homicides, over the next thirty years- those were the ones Mulder was aware of- to which Nothing could be tied. It was near impossible to catch him,” she shakes her head, “He and his associates- he had two- lived on the margins of society. If they need money, they robbed. When they needed blood, they killed. Everything else must have been just because they could. I've been keeping track of them since-” she looks at the ceiling, “I don't know. I don't know. I inherited Mulder's files. I've been tracking them.”  
“But how can someone be invisible, now?”  
She shakes her head and laughs. “It's easy. If you don't have a social security number, it's like being invisible, officially. You don't let anyone take your fingerprints or DNA or retinal scan or bacteria or voice. You keep your secretions to yourself. You don't fuck. You don't go to the doctor. You don't go to hotels. You get self-wiping fingerprint locks for your doors. If you smoke, you get one-time use inhalers. You have one cup that you use, all the time, even in public. You wear sunglasses, and you make your face look asymmetrical,” she motions to her lopsided eye make up, “You get surgery, from people who don't ask questions and only take cash. You make friends with cops- lawyers- clerks- medical examiners.”  
Schiffer covers their mouth. “Are you-” they say, finally.  
“No.” She shakes her head. “Not even remotely. I'm something else. But I will kill you, Schiffer, if you tell anyone.”  
They shrug. “What do I care.”  
“I swear to you. I'll find a way.”  
“Scull-bags. You're more use to me alive than dead. I do, however, want a DNA sample.”  
“In twenty years.”  
“Fine.”  
“Fine.”  
“You wanna get a drink?”  
Scully raises her eyebrows. “You want to get a drink?”  
“Sure. It's five o'clock somewhere.”  
She looks at her watch. “Here, in twenty minutes.”  
Schiffer smiles. “Come on. If you even get a whiff that it's a trap, you can stab me in the eye with a toothpick.”  
“I would.”  
“I know you would.”  
There's a bar where they do theme nights- a different decade every night of the week. Tonight, it's the 1990's. She pulls her cup from her bag, orders a bottled beer.  
“This must bring back memories,” Schiffer murmurs into their drink. They look up. “Does it? How old are you, anyway?”  
Scully looks heavenward. “In 1990, I was at Quantico.”  
“No shit. You were an FBI agent.”  
“Yes. I trained as a medical doctor, but I sought a career in law enforcement. I wanted to rebel. I didn't want my father to think he could direct my every step through life. I wanted to disappoint him. I wanted him to be angry. And to forgive me.”  
“When I wanted to piss off my dad, I just got my nose pierced.”  
Scully laughs. It comes up from the bottom, bubbles up like a geothermic spring through the earth's crust.  
“So, how does a massive over-achiever with the world at her feet end up a mall cop forced to tazer some perv in front of the Dairy Queen?”  
“You'll say that the use of force was justified?”  
Schiffer rolls their eyes. “I told you I would. You saved someone's life. The boy those assholes were attempting to abduct was so full of Rohypnol that he still doesn't remember anything before last Tuesday- aside from being all of fifteen years old. It doesn't really matter how you got to where you were going; what matters is that it was the right place to be.”  
Scully sighs. “This isn't how we do things.”  
“It is, now, because this is the way they got done. What do you want to do, Scull-bags, turn yourself in? For what, exactly? Getting more life than most of us do? That's what this is about, right- some kind of Interview With the Vampire guilt bullshit? Do you know how crazy you'd look, if-”  
“I'm not going to tell anyone how old I am.”  
“What I was going to say is, do you know how crazy you'd look if you started talking about vampires, and your feelings, your intuition, and shit? I could back you up, sure- I could show my findings, prove that the guy you killed was older than my dad- but what would be the point of that? Don't you want to just-” Schiffer makes a deflated sound, “live a normal life? I don't know what it's been like for you, but don't you want to just be normal for a while? Go to work, do your job, go home? Let me help you.”  
“Why?”  
“Why?” Schiffer laughs, “Why not? Why wouldn't I?”  
Scully shakes her head. “Don't I scare you?”  
“Scully- look around you. It's 2056. Do you know how old I am?”  
She frowns. “Thirty- twenty-five?”  
“I'm forty-nine.”  
“You look good.”  
“I've been modifying my cells since I was in my twenties. When was the last time you saw someone who didn't look good?”  
She thinks. Nothing comes.  
“You might be unusual, but we're catching up. Soon, everyone's going to be like you, and you'll be able to vanish. Not just hide, but disappear. Forget being a mall cop- you'll be able to be doctor, if you want. Live a real life.”  
She doesn't say anything. What can she say? On the little stage, someone's gargling with Nirvana's Come As You Are. Suddenly, the world is as open to her as it was in 1990. What will she do?  
“Thank you, Shitface,” she whispers, leans forward and kisses their cheek.

“I don't know where she is,” Schiffer says blandly, “I saw her last night. She said that she was looking forward to proving her innocence. I said I was looking forward to helping.” They hold up their tablet, and jiggle it so that it waves back and forth, making a wobbly sound.  
“She couldn't have been looking forward to it that much,” someone mutters. “Try her phone again.”  
“No answer,” someone else says, “It's not even within fifty feet of her. Wherever she is.”

'Wherever she is' is a little hole near the beach, advertising 3D television and sterile internet. They're in a room near the back, easy to find. She can still talk like an FBI agent, which always made all the difference. Initially, it was because she was young and a woman, and in order to make other people believe, she first had to believe, herself. People belittle faith, but, really, it's everything.  
Within ten feet of the front door, she hears the music. She frowns. Someone could have called management to complain. For a moment, she stands in a pool of shadow. No one passes by her. The parking lot is empty. The shopping center across the street is empty. It's all beyond empty; it's impossible to imagine that anyone has ever been there. The music pouring out of the room is the only sign of life. If one could call it life. Though, both science and religion now agree that life is relative: the dead have been brought back to life, by both man and God; death has been defeated, and life-everlasting is available to everyone. Scully scratches her nose, looks around. She can't wait forever.  
The door is actually pretty solid, but it's all a matter of physics. A hundred pounds is a hundred pounds, and nothing likes to be hit with a hundred pounds, not even a locked door.  
They're sitting on the floor, playing video games. They look at her. The chubby one blinks. The other one's mouth falls open. The gun is older than the hotel; than this street. It's almost as old as she is. It makes her sad; a wave of melancholia comes over her as she darts across the street, into the labyrinth of the shopping center with its outdoor courtyard. It's a terrible thing to end a life, even one that's lasted longer than it had a right to, and was extended at a horrible cost. It's never horrible when you're living it, though; when you're there, up close, doing it, it's just life. The things you do, you stop thinking about them; they become normal.  
Normal. That was what Schiffer promised her. Or threatened her with. It's coming for her, and not on her terms. Normal. It's what her father would want for her. It's what Mulder would want for her. Standing in the shadow of the phone repair place, she frowns. No, it isn't. If Mulder were here, he'd be investigating her. In a gentle and intimate way, filled with wonder and delight, but investigating her, all the same. But what does she want?  
Of course, the decision is already made. She missed her hearing. She's just killed two people. When she stills herself, forces herself to put everything aside, she realizes the truth. She steps out of the shadow, looks into the empty street. If the police have been called, they haven't yet arrived. She walks further. Her apartment is close. The things there, though, she doesn't need them. She doesn't really need anything. If you live long enough, you learn how to shed things gracefully. You learn that nothing is permanent, and after that, you just don't care.  
Scully realizes that she's not ready to be normal yet.


End file.
